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The third short story book by the author Uršula Kovalyk (born 1969) entitled “Common Dead Father” (the previous two volumes were published in ia in 2002 – “Unfaithful Women Lay No Eggs” – and in 2004 – “Travesty Show”), appearing in the Prague publishing house MAŤA in 2006, is a surprisingly well-informed and deeply human probe into the life of women burdened by the numbing stereotypes and mechanical activities of everyday, highlighting the Hrabal-like „tiny pearl found on the bottom of it“, which is hidden in every person and surfacing in both quotidian and most unexpected moment alike.
Including eleven stories and the author’s interview expounding her views on men and women, her artistic alias inspired by her grandmother’s name, her work with homeless people and short accounts on her own life, the book provides a gentle and deeply felt account of the life of several women, from their childhood on through adult years, motherhood, ripe age and ultimately death. Girls whose lives had been since birth shadowed by the heavy drinking of their fathers (“Betrix and I”, “Fish Salad”, “Common Dead Father”) find refuge in escaping from their harsh reality, which they find no longer surprising: “Grandma was great. A great bitch. (…) Really, she was quite disgusting, but not even remotely like the father. With his socks on and what were once his teeth.” (“Betrix a já”) They can take care of themselves and still be playful and daydreaming while fully facing reality. Their world is rough, full of violent men, yet, at the same time abundant with lovely humanity, gentleness and dreams. A genuine, childishly naive way of seeing, awakening and a harshly sobering experience of a young woman who, in an odd twist of fate, became a mother (“Betrix a já”); again genuine, sincere, harsh and yet so human is the rendition of dying (“Three Women”, !Common Dead Father”).
Uršula Kovalyk’s short stories resurrect, with breath-taking precision, the half-forgotten atmosphere of the 1970s and 1980s: people queuing up for bananas, the deadening grey of new Socialist housing developments, uniformity of schools, restaurants and people. This world, though, is occupied by plenty of helpless and strained people, portrayed here as beautiful and unusual souls, innocent and unvarnished like children: madwomen (“Betrix a já”, “Bathroom”), blind young man (“Růžena”), aged female singer (“Travesty Show”).
Uršula Kovalyk’s women, in their day-to-day existence of mechanical repetitiveness of movements, processes and actions seemingly representing a well-organized life, sooner or later see this surface of “civilized” daily existence crack to open up dreams, crying into the darkness so hard until their emancipatory drive overpowers everything they have known and learned. The dreamy poetic quality of the short stories “Lunary”, with its heroine finding herself alone with the night, the moon, a picture of a boy and fish on seashore, „Bathroom“, whose protagonist, a woman, cannot resist the all-encompassing world of the jungle, and „Circus“ with is peculiar, cruel atmosphere of the night.
Uršula Kovalyk’s men are portrayed on a rich scale of emotionality: blind Jonáš seeing through his fine fingers (“Růžena”), ugly old Zdeněk, who, during a single evening, shows more empathy, understanding and humanity than all the dreamt-about princes of the former singer (“Travesty šou”), childishly charming and comprehending cousin (“Betrix a já”), „the flapping sweating buttocks of satisfied, selfish men“ (“Julie”, “Betrix a já”), violent drunk fathers (“Betrix a já”, “Common Dead Father”, “Three Women”)
The author’s style is austere, yet speaks volumes. The longest introductory piece “Betrix a já” of twenty-four pages covers its protagonist’s life since childhood, on through adolescence marked with a beautiful friendship, motherhood, ending in accomplished age sharing her musings over her current life among guinea pigs, small and lovely and vulnerable and awaiting their death. Shortly-clipped sentences that materialize things inanimate and their images are intertwined with perceptions of their heroines, making up dramatic, yet dreamy atmosphere: “I love the town’s outskirts. The concrete pavement gives way to a graveled road. It is snow-white. It leads into a vast park. Everything is dark. The color black is sight-killing like the band over a jabbed-out eye. Not a single light around. Only Eleonora’s watch is shining blue when its hand passes half-hour. The night swelling like a big bubble, and she is now entering the suddenly silent forest. Her shoes dip into humid gravel. Eleonora knows that the road is grinding its teeth. Angry, it is out to bite her soles. As a punishment for this nuisance. At half past two in the morning. She smiles, and dips her soles even more deeply into the gravel …” (“Circus”)
The perhaps only weaker point is the story entitled “Fish Salad”, where the book’s main idea, i.e. women’s right to make free choices in their life, sounds almost cliché-like and unconvincing. As a whole, the book will surely have its readers touched by its peculiar and gentle poetics.
Rather paradoxically, the Czech translator is a man, Tomáš Weiss; he does a very good job in finding Czech equivalents for all the fine nuances of its author’s soul imprinted in the text. Weiss‘ Czech is flawless; considering that Uršula Kovalyk is writing in the Košice dialect, an informed reader might wonder what this hasn’t found its way into the Czech translation. As one reader of Weiss‘ translation of Uršula Kovalyk’s short stories I find the translator’s job very skillful, and the book will surely be welcomed by young Czech readers who, unfortunately, have no longer such command of as their previous generation.
Translated by Ľuben Urbánek
